1. Field of the Invention
This disclosure generally relates to techniques for facilitating use of “cloud computing services.” More specifically, this disclosure relates to techniques for establishing a trust relationship with an untrusted cloud computing service.
2. Related Art
The proliferation of the Internet and large data sets have made data centers and clusters of computers increasingly common. For instance, “server farms” typically group together large numbers of computers that are connected by high-speed networks to support services that exceed the capabilities of an individual computer. For example, a cluster of computers may collectively store satellite image data for a geographic area, and may service user requests for routes or images that are derived from this data.
Building and maintaining a server farm can involve considerable expense and expertise. However, some service providers allow users to scalably deploy applications by renting portions of an existing data center on an on-demand basis. For instance, some cloud computing services allow users to rent virtual computing and storage capabilities that can be transparently adjusted as needed to meet changing computing needs over time. Organizations can leverage such platforms as an alternative to maintaining their own data centers, or can selectively use such platforms to flexibly supplement existing data centers during periods of peak load.
While cloud computing services offer flexible compute capabilities, they also involve some limitations and trade-offs. For example, the security policies and deployment of cloud computing services are typically not public, and hence users cannot be certain that secure data sent to or stored in the cloud environment will remain secure. The lack of such assurances sometimes limits the applications that an organization can execute in a cloud environment.
Hence, what is needed are techniques for leveraging cloud computing services without the above-described problems of existing techniques.